HubSpot vs Wordpress: Battle of the CMS Platforms

Content Management Systems, or CMS, are the heart of all internet-based businesses. So much so that its presence feel natural. Scrutinize closely and you can almost equate it the lifeline of your business.

If you don’ know what CMS means, even though you’re using it, here’s a simple definition for you:

CMS which stand for Content Management System is a software designed to support the creation, management, distribution, publishing, and discovery of corporate information.

It has the ability to manage the structure of the site, the appearance of the published pages, and provide navigation to the user. It has evolved now to support ecommerce functions too!

Think how hard you find yourself frantically trying to type ‘out of stock’ onto the relevant pages before anyone else tries to submit an order.

A Little background of the top two contenders

HubSpot develops and markets software product for inbound marketing. In fact, inbound marketing is a term that was made popular by HubSpot. HubSpot was founded by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2006.

There are also integration feature in HubSpot for Salesforce.com, SugarCRM, NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics CRM and others. It also provides third party services, templates, and extension that can be downloaded through the HubSpot App marketplace.

WordPress is a free and open-source content management system based on PHP and MySQL. WordPress first appeared in 2003 by the joint effort of Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little.

WordPress is installed on a web server which is either a part of internet hosting or network host itself. It is highly customizable and has literally thousands of plugin which you can use for free.

Advantages of HubSpot CMS

1. Easy to update content for different websites

To keep your website fresh you need to add content or remove content from your website. This is easier to do in HubSpot because it provides the most user-friendly control panel that allows to edit your website and add a blog post or social media content with just one click.

All of these tasks can be achieved with one login and one set of options from the same dashboard.

This feature of HubSpot would save your time which you take on login multiple website pages and social profile to update content.

2. Provides website analytics

The HubSpot dashboard provides detailed website analytics which includes keywords, page ranking, and daily site traffic numbers among many parameters.

Analytics feature of HubSpot generate meaningful reports that helps you improve your website on the go. Other related HubSpot tools allow you to track and convert leads to sales from recent visitors to your site.

3. All-in-one package

HubSpot is truly providing its customer a digital integrated platform where you can access detailed analytics, utilize landing pages, email campaigns, calls to action, social media integration, blogging tools, and subscriptions all in one package which boosts the confidence of the customer.

4. Customer support

HubSpot is not open source tool, it is owned by someone who wants you to have a great experience using their product.

It is extremely easy to call their support desk and believe it or not the wait times are really short and you can find enough information about your customer service rep right from the HubSpot website to tweet them a direct thank you.

They take customer support seriously. Very seriously. And that’s one reason that makes using HubSpot lucrative.

Disadvantages of using HubSpot

1. High cost

HubSpot doesn’t come cheap. Packages start at $200 a month and increases with the addition of new functionality and the number of contacts you plan to import or gain.

2. A/B testing only available for enterprise subscriber

As you know, A/B testing is one of the mot important tools for optimizing the email campaign and landing pages of the websites. Broadly, it helps you optimize the website according to your sales funnel. Every business owner needs this if they want to know what is wrong with their website.

In HubSpot, only the Enterprise subscription plan has this feature which starts at $2,400/month. For small business owners, it will be difficult to take the advantage of this feature.

In comparison to other HubSpot is costly. Services like MailChimp which start at $10/month includes A/B testing features. Unbounce which costs $49-$199/month has A/B testing tools as well.

But on the other hand, WordPress or for that matter, any other CMS doesn’t provide all features at one place. That makes this “disadvantage” look “not-so-bad”.

3. Customization can be challenging

Adding extra functionalities such as basic popovers or slide-ins on a blog post can be challenging in HubSpot. It requires custom coding in HubSpot to add this functionality on your site. You can’t just drag and drop.

Making Customization in HubSpot is more complex than other content management system where many plugins are available for extra functionality.

4. You’ll need an experienced HubSpot developer

You will need an experienced HubSpot Developer to customize the appearance of your website beyond what is capable with HubSpot website builder. And not all web developers are familiar with HubSpot platform.

Advantages of using WordPress

1. WordPress is free

It is impossible to get something for free! Just imagine how many times have you been given something for free that is fully functional and ready to use?

We know it’s hard to remember, but WordPress is a tool which is freely available. And probably this is the reason for its huge success.

If you want to upscale your site a little with premium themes and plugins, you’re still going to save tons of money over what you would pay for a custom designed site. It also provides hosting on WordPress server which doesn’t cost much.

2. Easy to use

Seriously anyone can use WordPress, you can easily add and delete pages and post without messing up the overall design of your website.

In other words, if you know how to use a computer, you can use WordPress.

3. You are in full control

The interface of the WordPress is so simple that you don’t have to rely on other to make changes or fix a tiny error for you. You can do it on your own this way. You are in full control of your site and your wallet.

Disadvantages of using WordPress

1. Lack of originality

Being a free software means that it will have a limited number of theme available to every single user. And you website might be similar to other sites out there. Unless you know how to customize the layout and style of the website by using .css

If you’re looking for branding out of a WordPress website, you would have to create a custom theme which will be heavy in your pockets.

2. Speed

If you want your web page to rank well on search engine, you need to look at the loading speed of your web pages. Page loading speed is critical for both good user experience and good search engine ranking.

WordPress is inherently slow. Since a WordPress website contains lots of unnecessary generic code, the web pages build in WordPress take more time to load as compared to HubSpot.

3. Lack of flexibility

WordPress is designed for small content websites.

If you want to develop a more sophisticated site such as an e-commerce site, or even a large corporate website that is not completely “standard”, this will require you to make several systematic changes.

Although these changes are mostly possible, they will considerably raise your costs.

4. Security problem

The easy to use feature made WordPress popular, Anyone can use WordPress. Millions of non-tech people build and run their own websites using WordPress.

And due to lack of built-in marketing and sales tool, people use plugins. Often, people don’t know how to use plugins or which one is safe to use. Due to this, they poorly fall victim of poorly coded website which opens the door for hackers to steal information.

WordPress does offer security services. But then, most people don’t know or want to bother about it. The result is every year thousands of WordPress websites are hacked.

Let’s see who is the winner

Round #1: Blog

HubSpot blog was built around the changes that Google made to their search result and upcoming trend in the industry including social search and responsive design.

HubSpot tightly integrated with tools such as CTAs, contact list, and workflows and blog is also connected to tool to create email subscription from the blog RSS feed.

An average user can also post a blog through HubSpot, it is very easy to use. One of the additional features of HubSpot is that it helps you to find out things like missing to optimize for the desired keyword, or if your blog copy is too short when you are optimizing your blog.

However, WordPress comes with standard blogging platform where you can write and publish a post. And there is no integrations tool in WordPress.

It also allows you to create drafts, schedule publication, insert media, and publish pages. There is no SEO tool in HubSpot which means it is difficult to optimize blog in WordPress.

Winner of the round no 1 is naturally HubSpot.

Round #2: Social Media

WordPress does not have social media feature built into the core product. If you still want to use social media in WordPress then you need to use third party or plugin integration. It can be free or paid depending on which way you want to go.

HubSpot has social media feature build in the core product, you can create a segmented stream of tweets based on customer, lead score, event or anything else.

Using social media feature of HubSpot you can immediately identify someone life-cycle stage, view followers, reply, re-tweet, share or view a record of the entire conversation and you can view full contact information. You can also figure which social media channel can be effective for your campaign by using HubSpot powerful analytics.

Winner: HubSpot

Round #3 Cost

HubSpot is all in one marketing tool that fulfills all the need of the marketer. The platform has an extensive tool to help you to find how well you are going.

It provides constant services like inbound marketing consultant and account manager, and ongoing free training from the HubSpot Academy. Due to all these functionalities, HubSpot is naturally expensive.

WordPress is free for all but for additional functionality you need to pay costs of hosting a web server, domain mapping, and the ability to edit the CSS (this are optional depends on your need).

With this, you will also get CMS, basic reporting, and access to themes and plugins.

Winner: If you see from the perspective of your budget, WordPress is clearly the winner. But compared to the marketing and sales aligned with CMS makes HubSpot really powerful at its price.

Conclusion

HubSpot is clearly the winner. for everyday content editing HubSpot seem much easier tool to handle than WordPress. And integration of marketing and sales tool with the website is the best feature of HubSpot CMS.